Arviat’s school enrolment numbers “correct,” Nunavut government says

In 2015-16, the number of teaching jobs in Arviat’s three schools will fall from about 62 to 50. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

The territory’s education department has declined a request by Arviat’s District Education Authority to re-evaluate its schools’ student enrolment data and postpone changes to teaching allocations until next year.

The DEA initially made the request this past March, after learning a drop in enrolment at Arviat’s three schools meant the education department would cut 12.5 teaching positions from the Kivalliq community.

Arviat’s DEA asked the government of Nunavut to consider taking another snapshot of school attendance in September 2015, before it moves ahead with any cuts, given the GN’s data entry system is still new.

At the DEA’s request, the Department of Education took another look the school’s enrolment numbers for September 2014, and again later in the school year.

“As it turns out, the numbers were correct,” said John MacDonald, Nunavut’s assistant deputy minister of education.

MacDonald, Education Minister Paul Quassa and other department staff visited Arviat late last month to meet with the local DEA, school administrators and community members about the changes to teaching positions Arviat will see for September 2015.

There were some discrepancies over how Arviat’s school community and the GN interpreted the data, MacDonald said.

While Arviat’s DEA argued that it will see 71 children enrolled in kindergarten next year, the community did not realize that kindergarten students count as half a student, or .5, as entered in a territory-wide data entry system, MacDonald said.

In Nunavut, teacher allocations are based on the territory’s standard ratio of 14 students for every teacher. A student is considered enrolled when they attend at least 40 per cent of instruction time in a given month.

Arviat’s schools, like those elsewhere in the territory, are only in their second year of using the Maplewood software system to track student attendance and enrolment, which replaced the territory’s aging Filemaker Pro system.

“We’re sympathetic to that,” said MacDonald, noting his department plans to introduce more training on the new system for school staff in 2015-16.

During the May visit to Arviat, Quassa hosted a public meeting and spoke on community radio to explain the department’s position: that it believes those enrolment numbers provide an equitable way to distribute funding to schools throughout the territory.

Community members in Arviat also expressed concerns about students who take time away from class to be out on the land, and not wanting those absences to affect enrolment numbers.

“There was a sense that we were punishing the community for pursuing traditional activities,” MacDonald said of his visit to Arviat. “But our system tries to take that into consideration.”

Schools are given the flexibility to set up the calendar to incorporate those traditional activities, he said.

Parents can also call in and have their children “excused” for a period of time, Macdonald added, which will not count as an absence against the student.